One Bad Son at Cherry Cola’s and Horseshoe Tavern July 2014

July 25 2014 – This week One Bad Son played two shows in downtown Toronto. The first was Tuesday night at the Horseshoe and Thursday One Bad Son headlined a great lineup including Stone River and The Lad Classic.

Shane Volk at Horseshoe Tavern — Shane Volk (at Horseshoe Tavern)

One Bad Son are good ole prairie boys from Saskatoon who have not been in Toronto for some time. The band finished up work on new their next album back in May and are looking at an early Fall release. For those not familiar with their sound, One Bad Son are a great mix of old school hard rock ala Zep or GnR and new school modern hard rock. One Bad Son were on our Top Indie Bands lists of 2012 and 2013 and certainly will be on the 2014 list as well.

One Bad Son has had great success in the past year with three top ten hits in Canada (Scarecrows, It Ain’t Right and Retribution Blues). Fans that showed up to see those hits were not disappointed. Fans who were hoping to hear some of the new material were also not disappointed. One Bad Son has a new single, Satellite Hotel, which is Canada’s most added song on Canadian Radio for the past two weeks and already available on iTunes. Here’s Satellite Hotel from Tuesday at Horseshoe.

The band filmed a video for Satellite Hotel on Monday night in a marathon 12 hour session that ended early Tuesday morning, it should be released in the next few weeks. The new album looks like it has a number of chart toppers with Satellite Hotel as well as Decades and Love Sick Love.

For those who missed the One Bad Son shows in Toronto, there is still an opportunity to get out and see the band play at The Moustache Club in Oshawa on tomorrow night, Saturday July 26.

Shane Volk is Canada’s most charismatic front man and almost seems too much at ease in stage and has a great rapport with his band mates and his audience, not to mention a great set of pipes. Still waiting for the day that drummer Kurt Dahl breaks a drum head he pounds the drums with such force. And the two Adams, Grant on bass and Hicks on Guitars are definitely Canada’s current version of Page and Jones as anyone can see on the new single or last year’s hits.

One Bad Son will also be back in Toronto on Oct 9th at the Danforth Music Hall with Airbourne. From the early reception for the new material at the Toronto shows, it looks like One Bad Son’s new album will be a very strong contender for album of the year.

Kurt Dahl (at Cherry Cola's) — Kurt Dahl (at Cherry Cola’s)

Hicks' guitar (at Cherry Cola's) — Hicks’ guitar (at Cherry Cola’s)

Grant and Volk (at Cherry Cola's) — Grant,Volk and Dahl (at Cherry Cola’s)

Hicks (at Cherry Cola's) — Hicks (at Cherry Cola’s)

Stone River

One of our all time favourites, Stone River, was also on the bill. To our dismay, we missed the majority of the gig, one that frontman Renan told us later was the best they’ve ever played. Well we’ve seen them too many times to count and they’ve blown us away every single time, so that was really hard to hear. Stone River just released Euphoria & Lovesick Blues which is another candidate for album of the year (so much good Canadian music this year! Public Animal, Bella Clava, Stone River and others and One Bad Son still to come!). They also played the incredible extended version of Hanging In The Bowline (Note to Stone River: Guys, this song is magnificent, always the extended version, please). For those that haven’t heard it, here it is from last summer at the Bovine.